


Perichoresis

by matchka



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: F/M, False Idols, Gen, Implied Kaz/V, Implied past Ocelot/Kaz, MGSV: TPP Spoilers, Mild Gore, More character study than plot, Remix, Sign Language, Stockholm Syndrome, The Omnipresence of Ocelot, Unholy Trinities, gentle implied quiet/V
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 19:54:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11297715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchka/pseuds/matchka
Summary: "...these Beings can reciprocally contain One Another, so that One should permanently envelope, and also be permanently enveloped by, the Other, whom yet He envelopes" – Hilary of PoitiersOcelot knows everything, and Quiet is beginning to understand.





	Perichoresis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GRAYXOF](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GRAYXOF/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Wetwork (1987)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9682943) by [GRAYXOF](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GRAYXOF/pseuds/GRAYXOF). 



> greedily devoured the entire series to which Wetwork belongs. I could only begin to scratch the surface of the dense and fascinating new canon presented therein, and therefore this fic is merely an interpretation - GRAYXOF's fic enhanced MGSV for me in a great many ways.

“Tell me,” he says, and if she didn’t know better she’d think it was a request. This is how he does things: first, he asks. There will be multiple chances to comply, because he is an infinitely patient man. Somewhere in the course of all these chances it will become apparent that cooperation is not optional; that the illusion of choice and the subsequent dissolution of this quaint notion are among the most powerful weapons in his considerable arsenal. The truth is that there are only ever two choices: either you will comply, or he will make you comply.

She tilts her head, enquiring: _how much?_ she might be asking. _What part? Where do I begin?_

His hands are flat on the table, long fingers dressed in arterial-red leather; armour, perhaps, or pure artifice. She has never seen his fingers naked. He lifts them to his chin, forming a narrow steeple, a pleasing symmetry with that sharp Slavic nose. “All of it,” he replies.

There’s a pause. Her hands quiver in empty space, muscles re-attuning, making the necessary connections with her brain. It only takes her a few seconds to remember how. She’s a fast learner; he’s an adept teacher. They are a good team, when they deign to partner up.

_All of it_ , she signs. _All right._

*

He knows already. There’s the joke. She would not go so far as to say he planned it all, though who can tell with Ocelot? He’s like a chemical spill, a radiation leak; his presence is insidious, leaching into the fabric of the base, and it’s impossible to tell what is random chance and what he has orchestrated. He leaves no fingerprints.

But he _does_ know. She wonders if this is a test. Will he judge her by each omission? The thought makes her bristle; she has done nothing to earn his mistrust, has endured the worst of his ‘interrogations’ without grudge or retaliation. (Though his _worst_ , well – only with her does he hold back. Only with her does he inflict just the bare necessities of hurt, of humiliation. And unlike so many of the other recruits – who wheedle and charm, or spit and threaten depending on how ashamed they are of their arousal – it has nothing to do with wanting to fuck her.)

She has been a model prisoner, though she can scarcely masquerade under that title now – _prisoners_ do not return from the dead and walk straight back into the arms of their de-facto kidnappers. She wears their badge now, doesn’t she?

They speak Russian sign language, because he is already three-quarters of the way to fluent, and because (he says) nobody else on the base can understand it. Kaz has no idea she can communicate this way, much less with Ocelot, and that’s for the better; Kaz’s victim complex is never more pronounced than when Ocelot is involved. Besides which, she has precious little desire to engage in two-sided conversation with the man; their hit-and-run encounters are better, less complicated, less _irritating._

She wonders, sometimes, what it would be like to speak with V this way. To _really_ speak.

Ocelot is perfectly impassive as she recounts her encounter with Miller in the medical bay; she forms the word _cunt_ with her hands slowly and deliberately, the word _cock,_ relishing the vulgarity. And she does tell him all of it, and _fuck,_ if there isn’t a heat between her thighs at the memory of it: Miller’s utter lack of finesse, lapping at her like she was the last thing he’d ever get to taste; knuckle-deep in the bloody cleft of her torn midriff, smearing hot blood across her skin as she came.

Not that it matters one bit how hot and bothered she gets; Ocelot’s legs are shut tighter than an adolescent virgin’s, and no amount of obscenely performative showering has ever provoked the slightest hint of interest. Not that she _wants_ his interest (though under different circumstances, in a different life…) But getting the measure of Ocelot has become almost an Olympic sport to her. As she talks, she measures his responses, notes that he is far more interested in the implications of Miller’s under-the-table tranquiliser habit than anything he might have done with his tongue, or with his cock for that matter.

(She’s almost certain they’ve fucked more than once. The finer points of Miller’s cock must be old news to him.)

If he’s bothered by her flagrant analysis of him, he sits tight on that too.

_Thank you_ , he signs – he always signs even though he’s got a perfectly usable voice, a larynx that isn’t a parasitic dirty bomb, a command of an obscene number of languages and it drives her fucking _nuts_ that he conserves this ability around her _– That’s all for today._

She frowns. _That’s all?_

He blinks, cat-languid. Sometimes, he is the easiest man in the world to read, in spite of all those layers of bullshit – the fake-as-fuck cowboy accent which has no business on his tongue, the perfect neutrality of those flinty eyes. And sometimes, well-

_You have an assignment, don’t you?_ Almost blithe. As though her constant cycle of death and rebirth falls under normal mission parameters. As though her getting herself eviscerated by a gunship like a fucking _rookie_ is just another piddling detail.

She sits there for a long moment. It would be easier, she thinks, if he were as tightly wound as Miller; she might poke at him, find the weak spot and watch him go. If there were even the faintest possibility of getting the upper hand.

The three of them are the unholiest of trinities. V is possessed of a perfect simplicity; he is exactly what you think he is, what _he_ thinks he is, and what he _was_ is inconsequential, at least to her: she has never met the man whose face he wears, and at this point, after everything, she’s certain he would turn out to be a disappointment. Kaz is a fucked-up bundle of petty jealousy and anger and PTSD, oscillating wildly between crippling inadequacy and grossly swollen ego, a man who fucks unselfconsciously and gulps tranquillisers like candy because it’s easier to fill the hours with distractions than it is to sit, and to think; and what’s more, it’s obvious to her that he was like this before everything. That this mythical creature they call ‘Boss’ was the original incarnation of the diazepam-blowjob cocktail, and that V is the false idol he worships with his entire diminished being.  

(Belatedly, it occurs to her that this clandestine monitoring of Kaz’s behaviours serves a purpose beyond Ocelot’s curiosity. These outlets ensure his compliance; they deliver the entire operation from his destructive impulses. Kaz is a landmine. One day, somebody will apply the wrong kind of pressure, and the game will be up.)

And then Ocelot, enveloping the other two as they envelop him in kind. If Kaz is the prodigal son, and V is the ghost – holy or otherwise – then he is the serene-faced father. He and the unseen Boss both, pulling strings from behind the curtain. All except for hers. Quiet’s strings are hers alone to pull. These benevolent gods have gifted her freedom, and yet here she stands, feeding the snake its own tail and placing herself in the path of its gaping jaws.

She could leave any time she wanted. She could.

“Be careful out there,” Ocelot says, in that obnoxious accent. “You’re no good to us cut in half.”

The sign for ‘go fuck yourself’ is the one she remembers best.


End file.
